


Eye of the Storm

by telemachus



Series: Rising-verse [7]
Category: The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types
Genre: Circles - Freeform, Gen, Silvans are weird even to other elves, musings, weird elves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-27
Updated: 2015-07-27
Packaged: 2018-04-11 13:57:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 563
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4438118
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/telemachus/pseuds/telemachus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Thranduil muses on his Silvan subjects' ways.</p>
<p>(or - head canon about weird elves).</p>
<p>Written for Teitho - Circles - in which it placed joint second.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Eye of the Storm

Silvans are not like other elves.

They have not that longing for the Sea – some even believe they cannot sail.

They have strange customs, beliefs.

A language of their own, jealously guarded, and never written.

When they dance – it is different to the dances of others.

They dance – for fertility, their own, and that of the trees, of the plants around them, in the quickening of the year.

They dance for joy under the bright sun of the long days.

They dance for love in the starlight.

They dance to make the sun rise and the light return in the long nights.

They dance for strength, for true aim, for courage – they dance the dance of warriors in these dark times – they dance for war, their weapons a part of the movement.

They dance as they are born, as they live, and as they fight – they dance proud in their skin, their hair carrying the braids of their history, never robed and jewelled as other elves parade.

The dances run fast, never slow, never stately as other elves dance.

The dances are loud, the sound of feet stamping, of hands clapping, of tongues crying out – not soft, nor gentle, not hidden as other elves like to be.

The dances are simple, one shape, repeated over and over, one chain, the pattern shown only by the living flames of their hair – no partnering, no complex weaves, no trail of runes across the floor, words spelt in the traces of the lights held in hands, as delights other elves.

Silvans are part of this world, whether we like it or not – they are bound to their woods, their trees, their lands – they do not pass through, ethereal, wondering at the strangeness of mortality. 

Silvans live close to the blood and bone, the teeth and claws of nature – they know their own strength, and the weakness of all sinew, all flesh, all bone, come the right weapon.

Their dances show all these things.

Their circles show their unending love and connection to each other, to the world around them.

We are not like them – we are different.

You think I forbid you to dance because I am blind to your heart, because I am too conscious of our position. 

You think I forbid you to join these circles purely for reasons of status, of dignity.

My son, you could not be more wrong.

I forbid you to dance because were you to join the circles light-hearted – it would be a mockery of their ways, and I would not do that to our beloved elves.

I forbid you to dance, because were it not a mockery, were you to dance in understanding, in acceptance, it would be the beginning of your end, tied as you would become to the ever-moving chain, the dance of this world.

More than that, I forbid it for I would have you learn your true place.

In the centre of every wild Silvan circle, there is a still point, a perfect eye of the storm.

In the heart of the Silvan land, there is a Sindar King – a King who cannot be a whirling, singing, stamping, clapping part of the circle.

A King who must be the Stillness at the Heart of Chaos.

Legolas Thranduilion, will you not learn this from me, and take my place when the Sea calls me home?


End file.
